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Jill Stein managed to raise $3,509,477 for the 2016 election, reports Politico by way of an Oct. 19 FEC report—a figure now dwarfed by the amount of money her effort to secure recounts in three swing states has brought in. As of this writing, $4,746,660 has been pledged to the Green Party's quest to have votes recounted in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. At the Washington Post, David Weigel calls it "the largest donation drive for a third party in history," but he's not too optimistic that it will amount to much, especially as plenty of cold water has been thrown on the argument that results "may have been manipulated or hacked" in those states.

Among the reasons why: The fundraising page explains that in 2004, the Green and Libertarian parties demanded a recount in Ohio." The page expresses success: "An election administrator went to jail. We also exposed the profound problems with DRE machines, which helped launch an election integrity movement." But Weigel notes the vote remained virtually unchanged, with John Kerry picking up fewer than 300 votes; George W. Bush won the state by 118,457 votes. And a recount might not really be much of a recount in Pennsylvania, which mostly uses direct record electronic machines. "In other races where those machines have been probed ... the recount has consisted of the machine results simply being scanned again," Weigel explains.